


Noah Is A Love Thing

by AgapantoBlu



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, For Adam, Fuck Whelk, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, The warning is for Noah himself, There are like five swear words and they're all in Ronan's paragraph, also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 00:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13178793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: For being dead, Noah loves quite a few things, quite strongly.





	Noah Is A Love Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justdk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justdk/gifts).



 

Blue is like the first shot of the night, the burning down his throat and the warmth in his belly and the fuzzy energy that runs in his veins all the way up to the brain, leaving him fuzzy but still lucid, making the room look brighter and the voices louder. She’s an explosion at the mouth of his stomach, the feeling of blood returning to a sleepy limb, the puncture of a thousand needles.

Noah isn’t in love with Blue, but Noah is in love with life, and being alive, and all the things he used to be and could have been. It’s more of a melancholic longing, than a full blasting love.

Noah loves life so much he can’t stand the memory of the brief second in which Gansey lost his —  _twice, twice, it happened twice, it will happen twice, is happening right now, both the first and the second time_  —, so much he knows if he could sleep he would have nightmares against and again about Ronan’s bleeding wrists, so much he has —  _had, it stopped, it will stop, it’s stopping right now_ — to flicker in and out of conscience besides Adam and his pain and all the possible sceneries in which Robert Parrish went too far one night —  _he won’t, it didn’t happen, it never will, it may, it could have_  —. 

He almost touches her, on St Mark’s Eve, at the Church.

Because Blue? Blue is life itself. In the spikes in her hair and the patches in her clothes, in her colors and her laughter, in the way her eyes fell onto each and every one of Gansey’s crew members and her heart sings,  _my raven boys_. 

Noah is not a raven boy anymore, he knows that even if the more he flickers the hardest it is to remember where he is on the time-line of his friends lives; but Noah is still one of Blue’s raven boys, he’ll always be, in every scenery, in every future.

He isn’t in love with Blue, but he loves her with his whole still heart, and it’s a warm feeling for a cold body.

 

 

Gansey is what looking at a miracle would feel like. 

Sometimes, you don’t get it. You don’t get how a seventeen years old can wear polo shirts and boat shoes and expect someone like Ronan, Blue and Adam to take him seriously on the matter of fashion, and you don’t get how someone so big, so bright, can exist in such a young body. Noah gives him ten years before Gansey turns into one of those people you look at and think they were born adult and wise already. You don’t get why he would stick to a car that’s been exhaling its last breath for the past five years, or why he would feel so insecure when the whole planet Earth would stop and start turning the other way if only he were to ask it to.

Sometimes, you don’t need to get it, though. Sometimes you just need to watch him choke on a sob in front of a red Mustang, or hear him whisper in his phone in the middle of the night, or build a miniature town, or command bones to move and lives to change. Noah knows how this is going to end, because it already ended, somewhere, somewhen, even if they don’t know. It’s a privilege to get to watch it unfold, anyway.

Noah feels weirdly proud,  _important_ , that Richard Campbell Gansey III would wear jeans and a shirt to help dig out his bones. It’s just a handful of days, in the great scheme of things, but coming back to his friends is worth the illusion that he might stay.

“We’ll get pizza. Don’t worry, Noah, you don’t have to eat it,” is the most beautiful sound in the whole universe. And Noah would know, because he hears them all.

Noah isn’t in love with Gansey, but he thinks that if there’s someone he would want his sacrifice to be used for, that would be him. And he does.

 

 

Ronan is just as special as his gift, as his tattoo, as the tentative love blooming in his heart, past the thorns of loss and grief and mistrust.

He’s the funniest. Ronan’s very own brand of honesty is refreshing as is brutal. It’s a burst of adrenaline, like skateboarding attached to a car in Monmouth’s parking lot and falling from the second floor window at the same time —  _in a way it is, it’s happening at the same time, and it’s marvelous_  —. You need to get past the first moment of absolute panic and terror, and here come the strong arms made for boxing and support, the blue eyes indulging on Adam’s hands and then locking as if in penitence, the fingers through Matthew’s hair and a stumbling heartbeat of hope beside Declan, the bent of the head in front of Gansey, the devotion, the loyalty. It’s every ‘ _fuck_ ’ that means ‘ _I care and don’t you dare mentioning it out loud_ ’.

Ronan is also, unarguably, the dumbest. To think Gansey may turn his back on him for Adam or for Blue, to think Blue might never see past his exterior, to think Matthew loves him without choice and Declan chose not to, to think Adam will never look back when he so clearly wants to —  _and he will, he will, in every universe, he already is, you dumb ass_  —. That takes an whole lot of dumbness to believe.

Sometimes, Noah thinks it’s not him that needs a good fly out of the window. Maybe seeing the people crying at his bedside in the hospital would finally open Ronan’s eyes.

Ronan’s love is like the glitters of the snowball at Target. You need to set him into motion so he can finally show the extent of the wondrous feelings building inside that magical mind of his.

Noah isn’t in love with Ronan, but if he had to hate someone it would be Kavinsky. How dare he try to take Ronan from the future Noah knows he can have, a future of happiness and road-trips to Harvard and kisses and a hooved child and a family of make-do and found-again brothers.

Noah thinks, sometimes, that if he were alive, he would really like to slash the white Mitsubishi’ tires. All of them.

( _In one future — past, present — one Ronan brings him to a field full of white cars and asks,_   _which one?_

_All of them_ _, Noah answers._ )

 

 

Noah loves Adam so, so much, mainly because it feels right to be. Because Adam had too little people loving him his whole life and Noah never wants to be one of those who didn’t.

Noah isn’t sure if he should feel bad for kissing Blue when he did. It’s hard to keep track of when her flimsy thing with Adam started and ended when his mind is full of an whole lifetime of Adam and Ronan bickering in the kitchen from morning to evening just to go back to the same bedroom from evening to morning. He feels a bit bad, but not much. He’s dead, after all. He doesn’t really count as cheating.

Adam is hard to be with, because Noah knows every turn of his thoughts and every scar of his body and every love-seeking gesture he aborted for fear, or certainty, of rejection.

Noah wants to love Adam so bad. To show him how much bigger life is than his pride. But at the same time, he is inside Adam’s head and he knows, painstakingly so, how devastating it would be for the only thing he has left, that little dignity he’s been savagely protecting his whole life, to be taken away by no other than the only people who’d ever showed him affection.

( _In one scenery, Gansey breaks Adam. He doesn’t mean to, he never does, in any chance, but he doesn’t listen and doesn’t understand and tramples all over what was left of Adam himself._

_Adam can’t love in that scenery. Adam can’t trust nobody who tells him they care, they love him. He’s learnt that even when they mean it, they will not listen to him anyway. Adam is not half-deaf in that scenery, but it’s like the rest of the world is, and from both ears._ )

When Adam has a good day, though, when he’s not hurting and he sits among his friends and is bone-deep exhausted but not sad about it, Noah clings to him almost as much as to Blue. There’s something precious in this Adam, because he’s alive. Because he so easily could stop being.

Noah dies again every time Adam goes back to the trailer park. He steers himself and closes his eyes and watches the scene unfold in which Ronan punches Robert Parrish and then Adam presses charges and then they move him into St. Agnes. Then he watches Ronan punching Robert Parrish again one more time. Then once more. It’s satisfying.

One night, Adam is not drunk on alcohol as much as he is on tiredness and slumps on couch at Monmouth saying he’ll get up soon again and they all know he won’t. Noah watches Blue’s hand reaching for his hair from where she sits on the floor, and Gansey discretely pulling a quilt closer as he waits for the slumber to be deep enough to allow him to cocoon his friend up in all the blankets of the house, and Ronan turning down the volume of his music two notches — and really, how do people don’t see how smitten he is? —. Noah thinks, Adam might not know, but he is already loved so much.

He can’t wait for Opal to come along. She’ll love Adam enough for Noah too. She will take over the duty to bring him sparkling stones and give him all the hugs with no second meaning and no price tag and all the innocence of a child and all the holiness of a being of infinite. She will love Adam right, the best of all of them, even Ronan.

Noah isn’t in love with Adam, but he loves him so much he turns his back on every future that does not have him.

 

 

Noah loves Henry Cheng before Gansey does. He loves him in the dark depths of a hole, with a ghost touch that soothes him to sleep through the panic, with frozen fingers on scrapes and wounds as make-do anesthetic. He loves him through every social turmoil Henry decides is the worst thing on the planet, giggling softly in his ear, and he loves him during every call to his mother, who may have a demeanor even colder than Noah himself at times. 

Noah sees lots of himself in him. Sometimes the layers of time and space overlap and he sees his past self running through the halls and fighting to get the Ravens Day approved, instead of Henry fighting the school board for this or that social injustice. 

Henry will do nicely in Gansey’s crew. He will do nicely in Gansey’s car too, in Blue’s hands. It will be tricky with Ronan at first, but who hasn’t Ronan made it tricky for at first? Adam won’t trust him from the get go, because nobody taught him to be that naïve; but that’s okay because Adam is a pragmatist and he will give trust in exchange for Gansey’s safety and happiness, both of which Henry can and will provide. Noah will make sure of that —  _he already has_ —.

Henry will be loved by the whole crew, at a certain point in a certain scenery, but for now Noah loves him, even if he’s not in love with him, and that’s enough.

 

 

Noah wasn’t —  _isn’t, will never be, will never get to be even if he could have been_  — in love with Barrington Whelk, but he did love him, the way friends love friends they’d do everything for. Noah loved him so much he didn’t see the skateboard coming. He never does, every time he replays his death. It’s like the bright red weapon materializes out of thin air.

He really, really loved that skateboard.

Noah watches Whelk pointing a gun at Gansey, then Adam pointing a gun at him, then Whelk going for the gun —  _and somewhere, in one future, pointing it at Ronan_  — and then Adam again, pointing it at Whelk. He doesn’t watch his old friend being trampled, he just watches his current one for any trace of regret or shame or horror. He doesn’t find any, and that’s good. Adam doesn’t need that on his mind too, even less for someone like Whelk.

He sees Barrington for a moment after he’s died, just before he moves on to whatever is  _beyond_.

Noah flips him off.

Ronan would be proud.

 

 

Noah loves life, his friends and glitters. Not necessarily in this order, but that’s the gist of it. He used to love more things, love them better and stronger, but that was when he was alive. Dead things usually don’t love anything at all, so he considers himself quite good, on the topic of loving.

He loves the lives his friends will live —  _are living, have lived_  — and he loves that his life was useful to that.

He loves Cabeswater, because it is all the things he loves and more.

He loves, and loves, and loves, and loves away in the soft whisper of a promise.

“ _Goodbye. Don’t throw it away,_ ” he says —  _said, will always say_  —.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Noah will live forever in my heart and you pry him from my cold dead body, when I'll be too busy haunting glitter factories with him to stop you.
> 
> Okay, first time writing Noah ever, so be kind, please? This is also a Thank-You present which I hope made @justdk as happy as her gift did to me!
> 
> If you want to ask/tell/chat-for-no-reason-at-all with me, my tumblr is [@agapantoblu](agapantoblu.tumblr.com), stop by and say hi!


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